From what I have been reading it is possible to get gentoo installed no problem, compile xbmc for ppc no problem BUT it is sluggish to use. However I remember reading a long time ago around the time the ps3 came out of people using it as pvr, playing bluray quality stuff in linux with no skipping etc. I know that xbmc itself is not optimized for ps3 whatsoever and they dropped even considering it after sony removed otheros.

Now my question is has anyone tried this yet? I was thinking along the lines of mplayer2 for it's multicore support and having 7 (iirc) cores at it's disposal it should hopefully be pretty smooth. (http://www.mplayer2.org/comparison.html - Easy to use multithreading support)

and fyi I will NOT be asking in the xbmc forums about this, so don't suggest it...

Remember, the SPE processors can't execute generic linux threads - they don't run PPC code and they are memory bandwidth constrained (at least beyond using their core local RAM). This is what made it such a challenge to write high performance code for the PS3 - most developers had no experience in dealing with such a beast. But they are effective for raw number crunching like physics calculations and probably some 3d operations (I'm not an expert so I'm not really sure).

Anyway, in linux you end up with a reasonably high clocked powerpc core but no good software to run on the cell processors (SPE cores using the official terminology). Certainly some video decoding operations can be performed in the SPE's (I believe Sony does this in their blu ray player software), but it's not straightforward to program.

Now, if this were on an xbox 360 instead, you'd have 3 real PPC cores to deal with, and parallel threading would kick some ass there.

I find it saddening after how awesome the original xbox was for XBMC that still now there is no way (or is ever likely) to get the xbox360 to a point where it can run xbmc

If only they could of ran with the idea that so many people used the orig xbox for so long was due to xbmc on it. I literally only left mine behind a year ago and that was cause the box all but died (serious soldering required, im ok at it but not that good, though seeing as i have a new system, thinking about it i might have a shot, just for fun lol) so i moved to a dedicated htpc, had nothing to do with 720p/1080p though i can now play anything flawlessly so im futureproof...for the moment, which the orig xbox wasn't, however the current one could do just the same :/

Talking about XBMC on Gentoo-Powerpc, can you say which platform fits best today? What about a ppc based Mac Mini 1st Generation G4?
I'm new to XBMC but would definitely like to install it by Gentoo, PowerPC is not a need but I'm used to it and 1st generation Mac Mini are not that expensive anymore.
What about a PowerBook G4, with DVI to HDMI adapter? This has optical digital audio too, not sure if it can multi channel Dolby Digital._________________ppc:PowerBook5,8 15"(1440)-G4/1.67,2G Ram|amd64:HP EliteBook 8560w,i7-2620M,16G Ram|amd64:Acer Z5610 (Core2QuadQ8200),8G Ram|amd64-prefix:OpenSuse
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